Articles Posted inDa Vinci

The da Vinci lawsuits involve both medical malpractice and product liability claims. Some of these are wrongful death cases, some of these claims are very minor, and there are a lot of cases in between.

The Insurance Journal reports on a malpractice case in Oregon where the plaintiff received a $100,000 award from an Oregon gynecologist who she alleges improperly removed a healthy ovary.

A jury verdict of $100,000? Huh? They took her ovary and they found negligence. The plaintiff asked for over a million. So, what gives?

This week, a Washington state court granted the first verdict for a slew of cases concerning the da Vinci Surgical System robots. The jury found that the robot’s creators, Intuitive Surgical, was not liable for the death of a surgery patient who succumbed to complications of a robot assisted prostatectomy. These robots, part of a $2.2 billion dollar industry, have allegedly resulted in patient injury and death. This case was the first of approximately thirty that are currently working their way through the courts with many, many more sitting on the sidelines that may settle before suit is ever filed.

The plaintiff settled for an undisclosed amount with his doctor, and then sued Intuitive Surgical. Plaintiffs alleged that Intuitive failed to properly instruct the robot’s handler, and that they also failed to inform of the potential dangers. The doctor, who had performed a hundred successful traditional prostatectomies, was only trained for a single day and performed two supervised surgeries before being cleared to work on his own. Let’s put it this way: would you ever allow this doctor to use the da Vinci on you if you knew that? The answer? Of course not.

Intuitive agreed with the plaintiffs on the doctor’s negligence and claimed he never should have used the da Vinci system on the particular patient due to his obesity.

Since its introduction to the medical world over 10 years ago, the da Vinci Surgical System has been hailed as a major advancement in patient care. A surgeon makes a small incision and uses the da Vinci camera and four robotic instruments to operate by remote control. Hysterectomies, prostate removal, thyroid cancer removal, and gastric bypass are among the most common procedures performed with the da Vinci System.

Though the system has benefitted many patients by offering less invasive surgical options with quicker recovery periods, a few distinct patterns of complications have also emerged. While no surgery can be made risk-free, we believe that the da Vinci System presents a number of increased risk factors to patients. These risks can be caused by design defects, inadequate surgeon education, manufacturing defects, and other problems that multiply the likelihood of patient complication.
The more prevalent complications include:

Surgical burns to organs and arteries

Tears or punctures to blood vessels, organs, and arteries

Sepsis

Excessive bleeding

Vaginal cuff dehiscence

Surgical burns to organs and arteries

There have been a number of cases that suggest using the da Vinci System is correlated to surgical burns. In March 2010 a 24-year-old female patient suffered severe burns to the intestines and to an artery during a hysterectomy. Her family’s lawsuit claims that a design defect in the da Vinci robot caused the machine’s electrical current to jump. This resulted in a fatal shock to healthy tissue. Additionally, the lawsuit states that the un-insulated surgical hands of the da Vinci robot contributed to the fatal injuries. The patient died two weeks after surgery.

Tears or punctures to blood vessels, organ and arteries

Because the da Vinci System separates a surgeon’s hands from the patient’s body, there is an increased risk for small tears or punctures to go unnoticed during surgery. There have been a number of fatalities and lifelong injuries due to minor nicks and scratches unknowingly inflicted by the robotic arms.

During a 2002 kidney cancer removal surgery in Tampa, the patient’s inferior vena cava and abdominal aorta were cut by the da Vinci equipment. The mistake was caught 90 minutes after the injury occurred, after the surgeons abandoned the da Vinci System for a traditional approach. The extent of the injuries was not known after the operation and the patient died the next day.